1.22.57
on November 10, 2023
at 3:00 am
slime gets the dreaded experience of rolling a tasty number of damage dice only to be told “so I’m actually immune to that damage type-“
Aurora
A fantasy webcomic. Updates M-W-F.
slime gets the dreaded experience of rolling a tasty number of damage dice only to be told “so I’m actually immune to that damage type-“
kendal just staring at it is definitely gonna become a meme format soon i can just smell it (yes i did stay up a til three to see the next page of the comic no i don’t want to talk about it)
For mobile readers.
Alt-text: enjoying the world’s nastiest slip-n-slide
Image source: ready
Tumblr text: c-c-c-comboooo
(I do like the new reply ui, it’s nice.)
please can i buy a stick
What kind? Do you want a walking stick, a writing stick, a whacking stick, throwing stick, sport stick (if so, what kind of sport stick), explosive stick, or another kind of stick?
Ya got any good pokin’ sticks?
Oh, I’ve got many sticks for poking. It totally depends on what you want to poke.
I’ve got ones especially made for food, people, walls, wood, floors, marshmallows.
the first thing that came to my mind for that last panel is LETS GO LESBIANS LETS GO LESBIANS
DID KENDAL JUST STARE AT IT? AND IT DIDN’T GET HIM?
You have to remember, Kendal is pretty much the only person that CAN, as he has a total absence of Void element, as the Void Dragon irritatingly found out.
Which is still deeply confusing given he’s not a homunculus, he still seems to need to eat and he can very clearly heal without outside influence.
I was under the impression that, being the incarnation of Vash, his body doesn’t contain ANY of the elements, since he was made in a completely different way than other living things
My guess is he is made of a number of the other elements, but the starmetal in his bones is doing something that you would normally need void element to do. What that something is, I cannot say…
I assume the starmetal that’s in his body somehow functions as a consumptive element similarly.
Plus, he’s sort of resolved any traumas he had, there’s nothing for it to use against him at this point. This is the value of processing and overcoming your traumas, I guess!
(Or maybe my reading of this is coloured by bias, because I see that as aspirational for things in my own life)
You COULD put it that way, I guess, but I think it would be a lot more accurate to say that he’s only like 2 weeks old, so he doesn’t exactly have a lot of trauma for the slime to weaponize against him!
Well, I’d argue it’s been a pretty traumatic two weeks, it’s highly possible to experience the effects of trauma shortly after experiencing it, so I think there is something else going on. I would say he dealt with his trauma in the dream sequence, but that specifically targeted his trauma related to Vash and didn’t account for any trauma related to his newly acquired friends and literally trying to k*** himself, so I’m thinking it has more something to do with the lack of void in him.
Woke up in someone else’s body, woke up bleeding to death, and about half of the other fights that he’s been in. maybe they just aren’t that traumatic for him?
I think it’s also worth pointing out that the glorp’s gaze attack seems to use your past experiences against you, while Kendall is at most a few weeks old and I doubt that there’s much that Vash regrets about his life.
I’d like to offer a few alternative theories (feel free to rebut)
Maybe the glort searches for memories with negative emotions tied to them (eg. Fear, sadness) since we saw Tess leaving Erin in one of his glort scenes which woildn’t be physically painful. Since most of the time Kendal has been beat up were as a deliberate effort to protect his friends, and he himself has only been alive for like, 2 weeks, maybe he just doesn’t have enough bad memories for the glort to do anything with.
Alternatively, the whole “reaching psychically into your memories” thing feels a lot more like the light dragon’s thing, what with her whole telepathy thing. If we’re going with the theory that she’s in charge of soul, then maybe it’s because Kendal’s soul is more like a god’s than a human’s and just generally weird so it can’t latch on or something?
Here’s some more ideas
If the gloop is a collection of once-people that have been corrupted by hunger, but can now hold back said hunger long enough to stare into their eyes and bring out their trauma, then I would say its’ willpower is pretty strong and direct. It also seems different from the cave crawlers in that way. I feel like it is looking for something/someone: either something in someone’s past that it needs for some reason, or someone who isn’t affected by it. In which case, if it is the latter, Kendal’s just landed in a world of trouble. Of course, all this is assuming that the gloop can see the traumatic past, and isn’t just making them relive it.
One more idea (I feel like this was mentioned earlier and I forgot): if this is a collection of decayed cave crawlers, maybe they could be looking for someone who can release their souls from this half-life? Or maybe I’m reading too much into this and it’s just an OP slime boss. Does anyone have any thoughts on this?
If you are open to alternatives to Jeff/glort’s void stare if think of it as void related or inducing emptiness then it might be trying to stop prey from moving away, it might be trying to knock out your resistance/self agency leaving you feeling helpless, hopeless, confused or traumatize so you don’t have agency to move away, Just a thought. Take or leave as you choose.
The intensity of his look is giving me the impression that he is not literally unaffected, just unfazed.
YES!! He’s immune! And as people predicted Tess comes in with the steel chair, which is also Tess!
Another point to my theory because if Kendal don’t got no void dragon in him then there is no way he got any light dragon in him! making him less/not effected by both!(the theory was that the eyes are light dragon corruption for anyone who didn’t read previous comment)
But it’s been heavily implied the light dragon’s element is the soul. Like Kendal not having any void in him makes some sense, because of how he was created, but gods are literally nothing but soul. If light dragon is the soul, gods are composed entirely of its energy. So it would be very weird for a person directly created and built by a god (and who we’ve established has a soul, that may or may not have spontaneously generated) to not have any light dragon in him.
Not all that weird; he’s designed to be a fleshsuit for someone else’s soul. Maybe if he had any Light of his own, his god wouldn’t fit?
Unless he picked up a bit of ambient soul energy while Vash was gone, which is currently the in-universe working theory, I think.
Well, he *does* have a soulbarrier now.
But his god -doesn’t- fit anymore.
If the Light Dragon was soul, then there would have to be soul matter that soul energy controls. But gods, who are nothing but soul, can control whatever stuff is lying around for them to use.
Also soul energy can be any color (gods’ eyes), while elemental energy is only ever one color.
Cheating a bit here by bringing up a different text, but in Red’s prose narrative about Pip on Tumblr, Pip calls her species “children of light”, and humans/elves “shadows”. Pip also explains “False Ones”, which are quite clearly gods, as containing neither light like her people nor dark like the shadows. (More or less, Idon’t remember the exact words…). So for one, gods don’t contain light, but also since they are nothing but soul, I’d think the light dragon isn’t soul. Souls are an even more fundamental part of the world/universe than the primordials.
I am working under the assumption that the light dragon isn’t soul, I personally think that the light dragon is free will, which Kendal wasn’t inherently born with, but that is what the light dragon gave the humans in the twins scene at the start of the story. Which I guess would also mean that metal cast might also not be born with it, but instead gain it.
Kendal is so chill!!! and Tess! too cool for trauma flashbacks, exactly cool enough to have a blast punching weird zombie slime
The slime seems to seek the psychic attack. In a couple of cases now, it seems to pause to stare, rather than engulfing. I first thought the Scare Bear Stare was to stun the pray. Now I wonder if it seeks something else.
I mean, Erin said it was just empty consumption – maybe it’s developed to the point where it’s consuming memories/trauma/psychic energy?
Can’t decide if immune because demigod or immune because baby. Demigod would make sense lorewise as seemingly this thing is void and Kendal isn’t exactly a regular human, plus its what I’m getting from the fact he no-sells it. But its also possible that the trauma eyes work by bringing up stuff you are actively suppressing and Kendal’s been working through it for a while now.
I remember a Batman comic where Scarecrow’s gas was just making Bats see things that had already happened to him so it just gassed him up instead of petrifying him. I think Kendal is just calm because he has just dealt with his deepest torment, not because he’s not seeing anything.
The slime bursts forth with deadly gaze
Which is when Tess does us amaze
And then Slime was definitely not immune to Lightning damage lol
When the abyss stares too long into the Kendal, the Kendal stares back. Then loses interest.
You can’t have tragic backstory hints via trauma vision if your tragic backstory is 100% known to the audience! Now that I think about it, maybe that’s why, from a Doylist perspective, Alinua didn’t get glorted. Her backstory is tragic, no doubt, but it’s also known to the audience; a trauma collage wouldn’t necessarily reveal anything we didn’t already know or suspect.
Kendal is immune? Interesting. I figured the glort targeted him because it saw him as a priority target, but I didn’t expect him to be totally unaffected. We don’t know where this thing go it’s trauma vision, but Kendal’s immunity gives us some clues to it’s nature. It could be void related, but @Moss’s theory about it stemming from light magic is interesting; Kendal wasn’t made by either dragon.
Electrically amplified blunt force trauma? Worth giving a go. Blades weapons are ineffective, magic is somewhat effective, and Falst put up a pretty decent show with his bare hands; Tess might be the one to seal the deal, or at least weaken it.
Prediction for next week: No more trauma vision; the glort’s chapter pages are numbered.
Edit: Upon further deliberation and reading of other comments, I’m now more on the train of thought that Kendal’s immunity is more a factor of his mind rather than his body/soul. Be it him not suppressing his traumas, the fact said traumas are still fresh in his mind, or that after his talk with the spirits of Vash he’s resolved (or at least accepted) the underlying issues, I see that being more of a factor for his immunity than his unique physiology.
my boi does not give a f
Oh come on, give Tess some trauma too-
I hope they have a good excuse for disappearing like that…
While I like the “no void in Kendal equals no psychic damage” theory, I like to think it’s also because he just had a nice dream sequence where he elaborated that trauma
It is impressive you how managed to make the monstrous formless slime look confused.
And the last panel is another panel to be added on the list for record album art.
Yeah! Just put drumsticks in Tess’s hands!
Oh hey! Tess is back! I love her. She gives me Toph vibes even tho she’s like 6’6 and Toph is a literal child
Called it! Even better than expected, glorps has 0 effect on Kendal XD
” slime gets the dreaded experience of rolling a tasty number of damage dice only to be told “so I’m actually immune to that damage type-“ ”
Funny, I just recently listened to that one episode in Season 2 of Rolling With Difficulty when VRLA learns in both combat encounters that the target enemies are resistant or immune to the attack he chose.
HE LOOKS CONFUSED LOL
AW HELLS YEAH THUNDER PAAAWNCH!!!
Pfff, it’s like a Ghost type trying to use a move on a Normal type. I was expecting Kendal to have resistance to Void, but the utter immunity is a pleasant and hilarious surprise.
Excellent teamwork from those two, especially considering they just met.
“Nice try, but I just self-actualized!”
Makes sense Kendal wouldn’t be effected by the eyes. He pretty much just faced his worst fear and he hasn’t lived for very long.
BAH GAWD THAT’S TESS’S MUSIC
Kendall: “Ah, that must be really impressive on all other people. Sorry, but this doesn’t work on me”
She enjoys her work.
I like how gleeful Tess looks giving the ooze an electric rug rash!
Awesome! …and maybe Kendal will turn out to give the glorp an enormous case of getting itself creeped out.
YAAAAS!!! KICK ITS BUTT! Tess’ Pose really looks like Red used herself as the Model. Fucking love it! I only realized with Kendal’s badass return that there was a definite absence without him. I suppose the lack of the core Paragon is supposed to hit the other characters as well as the tone. Fascinatong stuff!
Okay, I love Tesses pose there, it is glorious.
And Kendall just not even reacting is great
Well, that was anti-climatic. Jeff was all “Now you shall relive your worst, most debilitating trauma, and Kendal just went “Jokes on you, my therapist and I already unpacked that issue!” And Tess looks so happy!
Tess really came in with that smash bros GAME sound effect
I don’t think the slime has any void in him cuz if that were the case, Dainix and Falst’s definitely would’ve sustained alot of void damage from being from being continuously grabbed and smacked around. And Falsts void corruption was most likely from being in the caves for too long with an injury that allowed void to slip past his soul barrier
There once was a glort of trauma
That expected to exploit more drama.
But its eyes are trash
When used on not-Vash,
And Tess will make it cry for its Mama.
Woot Woot!
TL;DR: And I brought backup!
I love that third panel. They both seem rather perplexed, though it’s for very different reasons.
I cannot help but imagine free bird aggressively playing as Tess screams in for that kick
Tess: I WAS SPARKED READY
Kendal’s Psychic No-Sell here is what I imagine being neurotypical is like.
My mental picture of being neurotypical involves a lot of the kind of rules-bound behavior that Erin must have with his diplomacy and working with bureaucracy. I feel like Kendall’s “What? Was that supposed to do something?” mirrors my obliviousness to some kinds of social interactions.
I’m remembering in Star Trek V The Final Frontier, when Spock’s Vulcan brother tries to bring up Spock’s past traumas, to “heal” them, Spock calmly tells him that he’s already come to terms with that, and will not be joining the team.
This is completely off-topic, but its something I have been wondering for awhile, and I was wondering if anyone had theories or facts about this.
Does Aurora have an after-life? And if it does, how would it work? The only ways I can think of are, there’s two options, you get to go to one or the other depending on if you were a good person or not, or more like Ancient Greece with the third option if you were just normal. If there is an after-life, Red probably has an unique one planned, but I sure can’t think of one.
The main reason that I wonder this is because the soul is so important in this universe, so what happens to it when the body dies?
But, yeah, this is a major question for me, cause I’m a mythology nerd and Red’s mythos is so interesting.
There’s definitely an afterlife of some sort, I’d imagine that it’s akin to the City of the Saved of Doctor Who/Faction Paradox, basically a world where every sentient being is resurrected in immortal unalterable bodies. No need to work, grow crops or fight, you can just be with your loved ones. But the problem with this is that every being is resurrected there. In Aurora, that would include the Primordials as well as any other villains who die.
Early on, I think the Collector said something about human souls becoming unstable once separated from the body. That’s why she wanted Vash: a major god’s soul is more resilient, less reliant on a physical form. On the other hand, Kendal had an entire Coma Therapy sequence with the very much dead population of Vash. I don’t know if that’s a special case because of the way they died (buried with their city in an instant), but the latter does suggest *some* kind of afterlife is possible.
Hmm. I’m not sure. Perhaps it is possible for souls to remain intact after death, but not guaranteed. Or perhaps they have to be tied to something: a preserved body, the memory of a god…
Unfortunately, it’s been confirmed by Red that there is no afterlife in aurora in the traditional sense. When things die, their soul leaves their body and kinda unravels, becoming ambient soul energy. Ambient soul energy can then become stuff like soulcrystal (crystal that blocks magical vibes) or be made into new souls. So in aurora, the afterlife is most akin to reincarnation.
The reason the citezens of Vash are still around is because citezens of cities with gods are tied to their god, in a way, and when they die, the god has to sever their connection in order for the soul to dissolve properly. Vash can’t do that right now, as he’s busy being a prisoner.
Another note is that apparetnly using name magic (something that is very vaugely implied in Red’s Tumblr posts) can breifly reconstitute a soul and allow someone to converse with them, which is pretty neat.
Squeeeee <3 Kendal getting a "true heroic pose" on the last page, then a fine Pure of [a lot of things] "actually immune to that damage" moment here, and then
TEEEESSSS!!! <3 <3 <3 She takes such joy in bringing the lighting-strengthened hurt <3 And… will we see a sibling c-c-c-combo with fire and lightning now?!
Oh! Tom Bombadil is here after all.
…and if Erin’s got the goop off his arms, he can join in with his own lightning.
“Sorry Mr. Goop, I’ve already processed my trauma.”
This reminds me of the like, third times in D&D where my DM went “Okay, so anyone who failed falls asleep-” and three separate people said, “Actually, I can’t be put to sleep by magic.”
Local Himbo Immune to Mental Damage.
AND IT’S TESS WITH THE STEEL CHAIR
I love the eye design on the slime
So this comic confirms that Kendall would look great with an eyepatch.
You fool, I can’t be filled with traumatic memories of my past if I HAVE no memories!!!!
Ok, I cackled at “Whenever you’re ready.”. Out loud even.
women likers men likers and awesomeness likers are all eating good today
YOOOOOOOOO
Yes!! The reader community nailed it! Kendal being immune (don’t you just love that “is that supposed to do something” look?) and Tess coming in with a metal chair made of lightning magic!
Can you IMAGINE how much Red must have been giggling while reading the comments on the previous page? “They know me so well,” I can hear her saying with a smile.
WOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1
In the words of Strongbad voicing Teen Girl Squad: “Ow, my most-of-me!”
🙂
s t r o n g b a d
Can’t cripple someone by dredging up their old trauma when literally all of their trauma happened recently enough to be easily remembered anyway!
these two had the walk over here to bond, and kendal’s already realized tess’ true potential: hitting things really hard with lightning at a moment’s notice.
(erin also has this in his skillset, he just chooses to monologue and calculate his attacks like a NERD.)
To be fair, Tess can also hit things really hard with a Tess at a moment’s notice.
Considering it’s able to use the word, “Hungry” I wonder whether it’s actually thinking “Ah, shit” in panel 5, somewhere in there.
I think there might be a small error in the last panel. Im not sure if its just me, but it looks like some of the line art for Glort is on top of Tess.
He looked into the void and went “meh, seen worse”
Does Kendal have a soul? We know the energy in the vessel caused it to gain sentience, but I’m not sure how souls work in this universe.
I love Tess’ facial expression and pose omg! Looking very happy with herself
Look, can we at least agree on how AWESOME it was to watch Kendal no-sell the blob’s psychic attack like he was Hacksaw Jim Duggan? That made me so happy.
Popping out of non existence rq to note that Red seems to be keeping Kendal’s left eye obscured intentionally. I might have missed something but did something happen to it? Is our Floofy boy gonna get an Eyepatch?
As far as I can tell nothing happened to it. I think it looks cool but whether or not it is foreshadowing something or just a design choice is hard to say.
Finally somebody made their will save against this thing
Red as the DM is furtively crossing put the old DC and putting in a new one because she realized the players weren’t high enough levels.
I WAS WRONG LAST COMIC ITS TESS COMING IN WITH THE STEEL CHAIR WOOOOO
“slime gets the dreaded experience of rolling a tasty number of damage dice only to be told “so I’m actually immune to that damage type-“”
That is the WORST for real… I am playing a PF2e Campaign and i am playing a Swashbuckler with a void damage sword… my biggest damage is precision damage from Class Features, Bleed Damage from Bleeding Finisher and Void and Slash damage from my Sword… Undead are immune or resistant to ALL OF THAT…
We have been going through a city of Undead for Half a Year of Realtime now xD (cries inside)
Ok, only some undead are resistant to slash, but still…